The Origin Of Pearl S. Buck's Translation Style

This paper has attempted the analysis of Pearl S. Buck's translation style applying both qualitative and quantitative research methods with a view to exploring the main forces and factors in the formation of her translation style, based on the mode of cause and effect. In order to accumulate sufficient first-hand resources, the author has interviewed Ms. Janet Mintzer, President and CEO of Pearl S. Buck International and Ms. Donna Rhodes, Curator of the Pearl S. Buck House in USA. The writer has also visited Pearl S. Buck House and investigated the manuscripts of her writings, letters, contracts etc. both at Pearl S. Buck House and the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections in Princeton University Library.Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) was a writer who endeavored to promote intercultural understanding through her work, a translator who introduced the Chinese classical novel Shuihuzhuan to the world, a vocal spokesperson for equal rights, an activist for peace and the founder of an international adoption agency. In 1992, Pearl was called"the most influential westerner to write about China since the 13th century Marco Polo"by the historian James C. Thomson Jr. In 1932, she won the Pulitzer Award with the world-famous novel The Good Earth, which described the life of Chinese farmers like an epic. She was the first female winning the Pulitzer Award in novels. In 1938, she won the Nobel Prize as the first American woman. In the late 1960s, a UNESCO survey indicated that Pearl was the most translated American writer: sixty-nine translated editions of her work appeared in a single year. Hemingway ranked second, with sixty-four translations, followed by Steinbeck, with forty-eight.She grew up bilingual, speaking and reading both English and Chinese and lived a richly eventful life on two continents, through years that spanned the remaking of culture and society in both Asia and America. Chinese can be considered one of her native languages. She had been living in China until forty-three since only three months old. Throughout her childhood, she lived in two worlds: the small white clean Presbyterian American world of her parents and the big loving merry not-so-clean Chinese world. There was, she later wrote,"no communication between them."In her own favorite metaphor, she described herself as"culturally bifocal". From her earliest days, she felt herself homeless in both her countries, an outsider among people different from herself. The double-consciousness and bifocal perspective endowed her with a sharp eye for the differences and clashes between the Chinese and American cultures. She was raised largely by her mother and a Chinese nurse, taught by a Confucian scholar, and had Chinese playmates. As would later be evident in her writing, these childhood experiences indelibly shaped her personality and philosophical approach to life. In 1910, while her parents were on another leave to the United States, she enrolled in Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia. After graduating in 1914, she dropped her plan to stay in the United States and returned to China to tend her seriously ill mother. After her mother's health improved, Pearl chose to remain in China. Her two worlds merged sometimes and in other times were separate. Due to her personal experience, she had a stronger awareness of promoting the cultural exchange between different nations. More cultural similarities have been reflected in her works than differences. Her works began with the translation All Men are Brothers and ended with the novel All under Heaven. Both focused on the same theme that all people in the world belonged to one family and we should seek more commonness while reserving differences. She had an amazing foresight to predict what would happen in China and all over the world. President Nixon eulogized her as a"bridge between the civilization of the East and West."Nevertheless, Pearl S. Buck had long been misunderstood by both Americans and Chinese. There were more derogative comments on her than positive evaluation and more criticism of her writing and translation than compliments. Besides, in the 1930s, she was criticized by the revered writer Luxun, China's greatest twentieth-century literary figure. In a letter of 1933, Luxun dismissed Pearl as"an American woman missionary,"whose knowledge of China was"superficial". Luxun's distaste for Pearl's work may have been based on a bad translation of The Good Earth. Indeed, to this day, Luxun's widely quoted comment has presented a nearly insurmountable obstacle to Pearl's literary rehabilitation in China.As to her achievement in the field of translation, she spent four years translating into English the centuries-old novel Shuihuzhuan—one of Mao Zedong's favorites—which was published in 1933 under the title All Men Are Brothers. She valued the mighty power of Chinese farmers on the earth and showed sympathy for them. It was well received at that time in America. Yet some people in China argued that her translation was too literal and direct and more like Chinese-English. The dominant opinion that her version is a dead translation has had a considerable influence on people's assessment of her translation for a long time. Therefore, her translation has been unfairly treated and disparaged. In order to restore the objective judgment of her translation, the dissertation is intended to defend her and justify her translation strategy for Shuihuzhuan, from the perspective of historical criticism and based on the mode of cause and effect relationship. Firstly, the paper has made an overall study of Pearl's dual cultural identities, life experience, literary activities and charity cause, which paves the way for the following parts of the paper. Then, Pearl's translation style is analyzed on the basis of the statistic data and case-study of over sixty examples in eight categories. The theoretical research method and concrete evidence are integrated with the aim of exploring into the literary, cultural, historical and personal factors in the formation of her translation style.In order to avoid the subjectivity of the evaluation, the dissertation has combined both quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze her translation style. The statistical softwares wconcord and concordance have been applied to compare Pearl Buck's and Sideny Shapiro's versions. The dissertation has juxtaposed Pearl's translation and the other three versions in order to pursue her distinctive translation style. In general, Pearl foreignized the novel. She made great efforts to keep the original style very faithfully while she still took the intelligibility into consideration. She was faithful not only in terms of the words and phrases on surface, but the rhythm, rhyme, emotions and thoughts between the lines. Her translation is by no means a dead translation. The dead translation mechanically applies the dictionary definition so that it is incomprehensible and the original meaning is lost. Pearl's translation can be understood without great difficulty and the original flavor is well-maintained. Pearl's translation features the following five traits: First, Pearl tries to stay as close as possible to the Chinese original, and convey the meaning of the source language (SL) text completely and accurately. The way of expression, the sentence structure, the word order and the rhetorical devices are preserved. Second, she tends to apply simple and colloquial vocabulary. Thirdly, she has translated in a very detailed way due to her conscientious attitude. Her version of the novel is thus methodical and careful, more literal than imaginative, generally reliable but a little dull. Fourthly, she has paid special attention to the symmetry of the sentence pattern and word chunk, thus her translation is full of balanced structures. Lastly,in order to be closer to Chinese, she has used many long sentences, the structure of which is not complicated and appears a little bit loose.The writer of the dissertation would like to be a lawyer for her and seek all kinds of evidence from her biography, autobiography and writings. A new model of translation is adopted, that is neither"source-language-oriented"nor"target-language-oriented"but"translator-centered". It suggests that the translator's individual imprints are worth intensive study. In less than a decade there has been a veritable outpouring of new work about topics such as the translator's unconscious and the translating habits. Michael Cronin has proposed"Hybrid""Translator-in-Society"course; Gengshen Hu presents what he terms a new model of translation that is neither"Source-oriented"nor"Target-oriented"but"translator-centered". Basile's essay, mentioned above, and recent work by Rosemary Arrojo(1999,2004), Anne Quinney(2004), and Lawrence Venuti (2002), indicate the need for an understanding of the translator's unconsciousness. Susan Bassnett and Peter Bush, in the introduction to their collection of essays, The Translator as Writer (2006:1-8), argue for a closer look at the creativity of the individual translator. Articles by Maria Tymoczko(2006) point to the need to alter the very"western contemporary"definition of"translator"as a single individual, according to the time and place in which the translator worked. Today researchers who focus their attention on the translator, no matter the disciplinary framework in which they are working, cite an insufficiency of'raw material'on which to base their investigations. Researchers are aware of the need for more data. Translators, as well as the stories by and about them, fictional representations can be viewed as holders of deeper truths about translation. Factors in the formation of the translator's style can be found in the documents in which translators explain how they perceive themselves and ply their trade and in the empirical research on translators'personalities. Autobiographical and biological accounts of literary translators explore affective effects in depth. Three forms of experiential material related to translators can offer valuable insights into the effects of intervention by translators. The first of those forms is dramatization. Dramatization occurs primarily in fiction but is also found in poetry. This is to say that fictional portrayals of the translator provide information about events in translators'lives. However, as representations of the writer's attempt to translate experiences and feelings into language, they also provide insights into the translator's work with language, originality and creativity. This work contributes to some of the most profound discomfort occasioned by intervention. The second form of experiential material is non-fiction writing. The third one is autobiographical writing.Embracing this research methodology, the paper has applied the following three types of materials to investigate the origin of Pearl's translation style. The first is non-fiction writing i.e. biographical information about translators, especially information that would explore fully not only translators'work habits and their responses to work-related challenges but also the complete spectrum of their lives as individuals and as members of society as a whole. Now four biographies of Pearl S. Buck are available. Secondly, autobiographical writing of the translator has been studied. Pearl has written the renowned autobiography My Several Worlds. Since it was published in 1954 after All Men are Brothers had been finished, it is of great value to the study of her translation motivation and life experience which have affected her translation style. As the writer of the paper has collected raw data from Pearl's home in Buck County USA, the library in Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania, the valuable first-hand materials of Pearl's manuscript of letters, articles and books are fully analyzed. A great amount of indispensable data is drawn from the face-to-face interviews with Janet Mintzer, President and CEO of Pearl S. Buck International and Donna Rhodes, Curator of Pearl S. Buck House.Pearl has managed to strike a good balance between faithfulness and readability in her translation. The interview with Donna has proved that native speakers of English do not have trouble reading and understanding her translation. She is an industrious gardener who presented the exotic flowers of China to westerners. The formation of her translation style can be attributed to the influence of factors in four aspects. Firstly, the Chinese novel and its special language style appealed to her. Personally, she preferred the colloquial language of the Chinese novel, had a profound understanding of the essence of the Chinese novel and regarded it as part of China's cultural heritage. She had devoted her Nobel Prize lecture to a passionate discussion of the Chinese novel, arguing that educated people everywhere should know such classics as The Dream of the Red Chamber and Three Kingdoms. This respectful attitude determined her choice of the literal translation. Thinking highly of the realistic description feature of the Chinese novel, she translated almost everything in a detailed way. Secondly, imperceptibly influenced by what she constantly saw and heard in the Chinese society, she adored the Chinese culture immensely. Pond, Eliot and Snow, imbued Pearl with their enthusiasm for the Chinese culture. Thus the Chinese culture occupied an important position in her heart. The experience above contributed to her spirit of cultural relativism and her interest in promoting the Chinese custom to the western world with the foreignizing strategy. Moreover, the traditional Chinese philosophy has imparted to her the Chinese jen (human-heartedness) and Unity of human and objects. Confucianism and Zen have helped her achieve the state of the aesthetic empathy and fusion of vision, which are the key to the representation of the original images in translation. The investigation of objects, extension of knowledge and attentiveness of mind all have accounted for her successful natural imitation in translation. At the same time, the Chinese philosophy has provided her with the life attitude of calmness and detachment before others'criticism. Furthermore, Pearl's proficiency in both Chinese and English made her adoption of foreignization possible and realized her special translation process. Her translation process also naturally brought about the literal translation. First, she re-read the entire book carefully alone. Then his constant co-worker and teacher Mr. M. H. Lung read it aloud to her while she translated as accurately as she could, sentence by sentence. At the same time, she kept her own copy of the original open beside her for constant reference. After the translation was complete, Mr. Lung and she went over the entire book again comparing the translation word for word with the original. As a still further precaution for accuracy, she went over the work again with another Chinese friend. Since both people helped her with the translation were Chinese, they had a tendency to render the translation in a literal way, which would influence Peal's translation. Mr. Lung also explained to her the old customs, costumes and weapons as well as terms obsolete. It is also a possible factor in her direct translation of the novel. She always associated herself with the Chinese mode. She thought she was a Chinese. When she wrote, she translated in her mind from Chinese to English, which again lent itself to the book translation since the process she was used to corresponded to that of translating the Chinese novel into English. If we look at her Chinese novels and autobiography, the connection between her writing and translation can also be perceived.There are six chapters in this paper.The first chapter is the introduction of the dissertation, including discussion about the research motivation, research objective, research methodology, the scope of research and significance of research.The second chapter"Bifocals of East & West: the Dual Cultural Identity of Pearl S. Buck"first introduces her dual cultural identity and its origin. In her own favorite metaphor, she described herself as"culturally bifocal."Double identity became part of her. Living in a small Chinese city, she was separated from her own country and its culture almost from birth. America was her dream world, the place of fantasy and imagination while China was the world where she had actually lived for about forty years. As a child, she has heard other children call her"a foreign devil"because she was fair and they were yellow-skinned. They had called her blue eyes"wild beast eyes". She realized the rascals and rogues in the Chinese plays had blue eyes and she was vaguely hurt because it meant that the Chinese thought her kind was evil. Chinese who did not know her had sometimes spit upon her in the streets. Then the chapter has touched upon the impact of the dual identity on her literary achievement and contribution to humankind. Thirdly, it discusses how the dual identity affects her religious belief and inner world. From her earliest days, she felt herself homeless in both her countries. She was simultaneously an outsider and an insider in two different societies. With the double-consciousness, she always looked at herself through the eyes of others and measured one's soul by the tape of a world that looked on in amused contempt and pity. In this way, she was able to perceive the essence of Chinese and American cultures as well as their similarities and conflicts with a sensitive heart.In Chapter Three"Both Praise and Censure: Comment on Pearl's Works in East and West", representative phases of people's positive and negative evaluation of her writing and translation are exemplified respectively both at home and abroad. In terms of her translation All Men Are Brothers, before the 21st century, most comments in China were negative. Her translation was criticized as too literal and dead, even mistake-laden whereas today the value of her translation has been recognized and scholars agree that she has adopted foreignization deliberately and that she is justified in using this strategy. Besides, her translation and writing share the same spirits and similar language styles.In Chapter Four"Down-to-earth: Comparison of Pearl's Translation and the Other Three Versions", the software Concordance 3.0 and Concordancer for Windows 2.0 are used as the tools to find the high-frequency words and unique words in Pearl's translation with reference to Sideny's version and ANC (American National Corpus). Then a polygenetic analysis is made of examples selected from Pearl's translation parallel to the corresponding ones from Sideny Shapiro's, John and Alex Dent-Yang's and J. H. Jackson's versions. They are selected from the following eight aspects: the translation of idioms, sayings, poems, names, custom, clothes and weapons, the book title and the inaccurate translation. Although she was living in the post-colonial period, she fit into the Chinese mode of thinking. She did not work with British or American people, so she did not reflect those people, but Chinese. She has always associated herself with the Chinese mode. She thinks she is a Chinese. She is the only English-speaking person who has the window to open to the westerners and display to them what Chinese are like. She is faithful in translation as to the sentence formation, rhythm and pattern. She is continuing in that style. As a native speaker, Donna Rhodes, Curator of Pearl S. Buck House, asserts that her translation is very concise and direct, concise in that she is able to work almost word-for-word for what the classics want to portray, which is a labor of love.The fifth chapter, entitled"Reason and Result: A Multidimensional and Polygenetic Analysis of the Formation of Pearl's Translation Style", is the pivot of this research. It probes into the complicated multifaceted factors influencing Pearl's translation style, in the hope of breaking away from the stereotype of bipolar thinking. The impacts of the Chinese novel, Chinese culture, Chinese traditional philosophy, and the linguistic competence of the translator have been fully investigated. She grew up bilingual and learned Chinese before English. She learned colloquial Chinese from Amah Wang and the Chinese children she sometimes played with. She was tutored in wen-yan, the classical Chinese language by Mr. Kung, the Confucian scholar and in English literature by her mother at home. When she was only about seven, she was reading both Chinese and English literature. Her Chinese texts included selections from Confucius, Mencius, and some of the major poets. Gradually influenced by the doctrines of Confucianism and Zen, she devoted to translation out of her own accord with an attitude of naturalism. Besides, she was ready to help the vulnerable people esp. the orphaned biracial children in her life. Brought up in a Chinese context, she attended weddings and funerals and joined in the celebration of Chinese festivals. Her first love and first exposure to literature was the Chinese novels and Chinese way of writing. She had a sincere love and appreciation for Chinese novels. When she won the Nobel Prize, the address she made was on Chinese novels. She would like to convey the idea of Chinese novels and timeliness to the English-speaking people.Lastly in this chapter, Brian Mossop's Theory of Three Voice-types is applied to analyze Pearl's translation style. Based on it, the paper has tentatively proposed the sphere model of the translator's style. Suppose the style of the original work or writer is Point A, and the core of the spirits of the original work is Point O. Since the style of the original work or writer is the perfect embodiment of the core spirits, it can be regarded as the scale plate to measure the translator's style. In this way, a hollow sphere can be established with O as the center and AO as the radius. Suppose any point on its surface C stands for a certain style of the translator, the distance between any point on the surface and Point O is equal to the radius. That is to say, all the translator's styles have accurately, appropriately ad completely reflected the core of the SL work. Yet it is only the ideal state. In reality, the points on the surface can only be approached, but never be really reached except Point A. Suppose Point C'stands for the translator's style in reality, then C'O≈AO. In terms of Pearl's translation style, Point C'is very close to the spherical surface. Suppose Point B represents the translation style which is perfectly comfortable to the TL readers and at the same time reflects the inner core of the spirits of the SL work, BO=AO and AOB form a straight line. Then C'A and C'B represent the relationship of the translator's style to the original work's style and that to the one that the TL (Target Language) readers are most accustomed to. For Point C, CA2+CB2=AB2, since ABC forms a stable square triangle and conforms to the Pythagora's theorem. Point C'for Pearl's translation style is close to the surface, so C'A2+C'B2≈AB2. How far Point C'is away from the sphere depends on the life experience, life value, mental state, cultural attitude, linguistic competence etc. of the translator. In terms of Pearl S. Buck'translation style, C'O is almost equal to AO. Why can she develop such a faithful and readable style? Because she has proficiency in both Chinese and English and has been influenced by the Chinese novels, culture and philosophy. Studying the formation of various triangles ABC can reveal how different historical and personal factors affect the translator's style. It can avoid the thinking pattern of East in opposition to West, the absolute polarities between SL and TL and realize the multidimensional analysis of the translator's style.Finally, in Chapter Six, the dissertation arrives at the conclusion, reviewing the research findings, stating the inspiration from the research and pointing out the direction for further exploration. The findings lie in the following three aspects: discovery of Pearl S. Buck's distinctive translation style, pursuit of factors in the formation of her translation style, and establishment of the sphere model of the translator's style. From the research, it can be seen that the integration of qualitative and quantitative methods can bring about more objective results. Besides, the multi-dimensional and polygenetic perspective can make the study on the translator's style holistic and impartial. Development of the new scientific model will broaden the horizon of the translation study. Attention should be diverted to the overall picture instead of the specific words or sentence when a piece of translation work is evaluated. A comprehensive, integral, substantial, historical, objective and multi-dimensional perspective on the translator's study should be applied instead of the linear, static and bipolar viewpoint. The translator himself is the very focus of the translation study.To sum up, Pearl's particular translation style is something that the reader has to get used to, something that the reader needs to acquire. One has an acquired taste for it. Once he begins to read it, he will fall into the rhythm and pattern of it. She is very good at retaining the lexical meaning and sentence structure of the Chinese text. In her translation and novels, the same theme keeps resurfacing that universally all men are brothers. All Men are Brothers and All under Heaven, two pieces of her work build the bridge between two cultures. She is the right person at right time. In effect, Pearl's translation All Men are Brothers has promoted the intercultural communication between East and West and opened a window for China to be better presented and understood by other nations. Translation is a way of opinion expression, which reflects the history and ideology behind. Now it is encouraging to see signs of greatly increased interest in the translator and recognition of the diverse forces shaping the translator's style.